Sometimes I just feel like we — aka consumers — are being nickled and dimed to death.
Supposedly, we live in an age of convenience as well as an age in which let me do pretty much everything online. Supposedly, this is also the dawning of an age of prosperity.
A lot of the companies I deal with — including commercial banks — are always pitching the idea that I should ”go paperless” and doing so is for my ”convenience,” as well as to save trees. Fair enough... in theory.
Recently I finally succumbed to ”going paperless” with our phone provider, and to receive our monthly statements by email, rather than snail mail. Fine.
Of course then I come to go pay my bill online, and what do I discover? That there is a $3.95 "convenience fee" for paying online!
WTF, over...?
Rip-Off Alert!
Essentially the whole "paperless" thing now feels like a big rip off that has nothing to do with trees or my convenience and everything to do with the fact that the phone company now saves the money on not having to print and mail a statement to me and they get to charge $3.95 every time I pay their stupid bill!
Now in case you think this sounds a little unusual, of course it doesn't "have to" cost me money to pay my phone bill... as long as I sign up for “autopay.”
Which I'm not about to do as the autopay presumes that you always know that you have money in your bank account to meet your bills on a specific day which, in turn, is predicated on a greater system under which it is assumed that everyone works for some large company and they get a regular paycheck for the same amount, every two weeks or semi-monthly or whatever.
One Size Fits (Not!) All
As a self employed person, I not only get paid whenever somebody pays me which could be three times in a day or once every three weeks... and I have no idea whether that will be $10 or $500.
Consequently, I have no idea ahead of time when I'll be able to pay a bill... it could be tomorrow, or after 45 days and a late fee... therefore I like to be the one who controls when I pay my bills, not some autopay system.
And this, in a nutshell, is why I just can't wait for a better and less expensive paradigm for doing business, and for paying bills.
Crypto to the Rescue?
Since the very early days, I was always hopeful that cryptocurrency was going to provide some solutions to a whole bunch of different world problems — including such things as having to pay extra in order to make a payment online — but sadly, it really hasn't... yet.
But, as many as the wise people say, these are still early days.
In the meantime, I feel very tempted to go back to getting paper statements mailed, so I can at least send a check in payment, for the cost of a first class stamp!
A check? What's that? Who uses checks, anymore? Yeah, I know, I'm an old fossil!
Thanks for reading, and enjoy the rest of your weekend!
How about YOU? Encountered any annoying fees, lately? What's the most ridiculous and meaningless "surcharge" you have had to pay? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20220416 21:42 PDT
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